Elektron Musical Instruments

>From: "puretokyo2002" <puretokyo@...>
>Reply-To: elektron-users@yahoogroups.com
>To: elektron-users@yahoogroups.com
>Subject: Re: [elektron] Elektron stand-alone hardware sequencer
>Date: Sat, 17 Jan 2004 00:38:22 -0000
>
>--- In elektron-users@yahoogroups.com, "SiD LoHr" <sp0ok_show@y...> wrote:
> > i dont really think to world needs yet another stand alone hardware
> > sequencer tho.. theres already more than enuff to choose from.
>
>Such as..? I'm wracking my brains here...
>
  I'll second that! I know this has already been mentioned on this thread, 
but what choice is there really? Yamaha? Well I own a qy700 myself, which, 
while being totally hardware-based in the studio (no goddamn computers in 
there!) is useful for backing up sysex and performing other non 
sequencing-related activities, is really far from ideal when it comes to 
sequencing for me. I have already tried and completely disliked the software 
sequencer route, in particular how slow it all is, and also by the fact that 
you need a noisy, unreliable, not-very-portable computer to run it on, as 
well as the fact that you have to have a degree in computing to be able to 
make a half decent music set-up that will do what the software and soundcard 
boxes said it would be able to without crashing every 20 minutes!
  With the demise of the Latronic Notron, there is really nothing simple but 
effective out there.
As I say there is always Yamaha stuff, but that all seems to rely on the 
fact that their internal tone generators will be your main instruments, and 
you still have to pay for the damn things whether you use them or not ('not' 
is usually the case, unless you like all your tunes to sound like karaoke 
backing tracks). The QY700, dubbed "the king of hardware sequencers" has 2, 
yes 2 whole MIDI outs for its 32 channels and while being able to support 32 
racks of non-loop based cubase-stle grid edit (but with no cut and pasting 
of sections!) supports only 16 channels of "pattern" tracks which you can 
arrange into a song, but which still rely on the slow painful task of grid 
or list editing. And this is the best we've got!
  The only other options are strange, large German efforts (mentioning no 
names here) which mostly have a bias towards CV/Gate (which may be fine if 
you have a studio full of vintage Moogs) and are at best cumbersome and 
pretty basic to say the least! What we need are LESS 'grooveboxes' ( a word 
which to me just says 'I'm a DJ but want a Studio-In-A-Box which is easy to 
use so I can make some 'grooves') and more serious bits of kit that have 
more than 1 MIDI in/out/thru and aren't designed as a Jack-of-all-Trades 
'Song Machine'!
  And this is 'plenty to choose from'! Let me guess, you use a software 
sequencer don't you?...

-Big Ed

_________________________________________________________________
Stay in touch with absent friends - get MSN Messenger 
http://www.msn.co.uk/messenger